The final animation

The final animation

 

 

After creating a play blast of the walk cycle from side view and front view, finally completed my personality walk cycle. The model was smoothed, controls and other unnecessary objects were hidden and grid hidden when play blasted. However I was unable to smooth the animation of the left arm and also could not hide the grey out bone like joints on the shoulders and between the feet without hiding the geometry. 

 

 

These were the tests for the final animation play blast from the front and the side, while below are the final rendered animations for hand in.

 

 

 



Blocking out the walk

 

 

Blocking

 

 

The next step in the animation was to create a basic blocking walk loop. First I started with the position of the feet, using the reference for the side view first. After the feet were done, I started with the position of the right arm. I began having trouble with bending the spine properly so I decide to leave it for later. Because my personality is sluggish due to being exhausted, I lengthened the amount of frames it would take for the cycle to be complete for a left and right step.

 

 

 

After the right arm I began on the left arm and head motions. With some attendance, I fix the arm and a slipping problem with the last frame of the foot animation, and soon with the hip to create a side to side figure eight motion when viewed from the front and a up and down motion from the side. More bounces and exaggeration was add to the movement of the body, especially the arms and hands to give the walk more personality and make it more interesting and less stiff.



 

After a class peer review, I was able to find the correct controls for the spine and resolve the problem of the lack of bend, giving the character an even more tired feel. While blocking the arms and making them move correctly, I ran into a problem where the arm would begin to clip through the body near the later frames causing problems and frustration. to make matters worse, the left began to jolt at the end of the cycle, speeding up for a few frames causing issues with the consistency of the animation.

Planning a walk

 

 

Planning

 

 

When starting this project, I wanted to keep the walk I would be making simple enough for me to complete, yet interesting enough to keep the viewers attention. While browse through Youtube looking for walk cycles, I decided to use an exhausted female walk from Endless reference which showed the front and side view with a grid to help pin point the location of feet and arms. After watching the video I began creating a reference of the standard walk cycle with the different key pose, such as contact, up, down and passing pose and created two images with a walk cycle of the front and side.